


Ich grolle nicht

by nnozomi



Series: orchestra'verse [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Classical Music, Gen, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus had never thought he would outlive the Marauders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ich grolle nicht

1985

Severus followed the silvery cat to the Deputy Headmistress’ office. It wouldn’t do for the students to see him running in the corridors, but he took long strides and was out of breath by the time he got there, from the exercise and also from the sharp unease making his heart beat too fast.

Minerva—he had finally grown accustomed to using her first name—was sitting behind her desk, slumped in her chair as he’d almost never seen her, so that for a moment he thought she was ill. “Are you—“ he began, but she raised a hand to cut him off.

“Oh, Severus,” she said, as if his name was all she could manage. She shook her head. “This came from the Ministry—you’ve as much right to see it as I have.” A gesture to a parchment on her desk.

She didn’t seem about to hand it to him, so he took two tentative steps forward, heart thudding harder, and picked it up. An unfamiliar, official crest, and a short banal message:

_The Consulate of Wizarding Australia regrets to inform you of the death of a British wizarding subject, Sirius Creon Black, in Australian territory. Mr. Black’s death was confirmed on the nineteenth of this month. Foul play is not suspected._

The parchment drifted back onto the desk.

“He kept his real name,” Minerva whispered, and then much more sharply, “Severus? Sit down before you fall down.”

“I’m all right,” Severus mumbled, but once he’d sunk into the chair behind him he had to blink rapidly to keep the room from going dark.

“Don’t expect any expressions of grief from this quarter,” he said roughly, before his vision had quite cleared. “If that’s what you called me here for, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“No.” Minerva’s voice still sounded distant, although her face was clear. “But I thought you should know.”

Severus heard himself give a rusty-sounding laugh. “What irony. That I should outlive the Marauders.”

For an appalled moment he thought she was going to burst into tears, but not Minerva. “You did your best not to,” she said quietly. “And James’ death was nobody’s fault.”

“Reckless bastard.” Severus had forgiven James Potter for his Marauding ways a long while back. It was proving far more difficult to forgive him for dying. “All that Quidditch and he couldn’t keep himself and his wife alive on a test flight.” (That generation of brooms had claimed several test flyers. The headlines in the _Prophet_ had read NEW BROOMS SWEEP DEATH.) “How can you keep teaching Gryffindors, Minerva?” It was there, to his own surprise, that the pain leaked into his voice. “My Snakes at least know how to look out for themselves. How can you stand—“ He couldn’t think of any Slytherin students who had died in the short time since he’d become Head of House, which was only as it should be. Minerva had been mentoring Gryffindors since his childhood. How could she bear watching those recknaughts go off and—

“I would never have guessed you’d come to grow into teaching so,” Minerva murmured, the quick light words skimming over emotion. “One never gets used to it, never. I hope you never have to stand at the memorial for a student of yours, Severus.”

“I’ve stood at enough.”

The name neither of them had spoken pressed at his eardrums. When James and Lily died, the grief was bad but it was clean. Not like—

“I hate him,” Severus whispered, almost to himself. “Still. Dead or no. Why couldn’t he have come back? I wouldn’t have—I would have wanted—“ His throat closed over the name.

Minerva closed her eyes, running a finger and thumb over her eyelids. “I can’t ask you not to hate him. You of all people.” She opened her eyes again, staring blankly over his shoulder. “But do remember—now that he’s dead too—it really wasn’t his fault. If—if other things had been different—“

“Enough, Minerva.” They’d been over this before; nothing was going to change just because Sirius Black was dead too.

 

1970-1976

The only time Severus ever wished he’d been sorted Gryffindor was right at first, when it would have meant being with Lily. Then he took a closer look at Lily’s Housemates and began to feel safer in Slytherin. Trusting your Housemates was a foreign concept here, but life was much better that way, when you could admit right up front that everything had subtext and everyone had something they weren’t talking about. In Gryffindor you would have been shamed for acting that way; in Slytherin it meant you’d learned the House rules properly.

He took his share of hell for being a half-blood, of course. Slytherin traditionally had the highest share of purebloods (“once upon a time, when all wizards were pureblooded, there was _only_ Slytherin House,” some people liked to say, and would reply on having the historical inaccuracies pointed out that the statement had a _symbolic_ truth). In his first term alone Severus had heard theme and variations on the state of his mother’s degradation for having married a Muggle, or alternatively his father’s depravity for having raped a witch. Take your pick.

He didn’t hit back. (Lily and he had gone through that one.) Not with his fists. He’d have lost, anyway, and he wasn’t some red-faced, yellow-bellied Gryffindor. He got very good at subtle sabotage, both of the physical variety (he was quicker than anyone, after all, at getting maximum effect with minimum visibility in a Potions cauldron) and otherwise. After a while, when Lucius Malfoy made it clear Severus was his to pick on, his other Housemates backed off.

Lucius was in sixth year already, and it was customary for Slytherin House to respect his every whim and fancy. Severus made a point of being unimpressed, talking back, ignoring Lucius’ orders and demands to the point just beyond which he would have been risking life and limb—and realized after a while that Lucius really liked him for it, for the stimulation of it, maybe even for his twisty Slytherin-style guts. After all, there was only one other Slytherin who had the nerve to talk back to Lucius at all, and that another first year.

Lucius and Severus, in turn, were the only ones who didn’t treat Narcissa Black as “the little one,” “the baby sister.” Seventh-year twins Bellatrix and Andromeda dominated the family; it was only the sixth-year Malfoy and his first-year apprentice who noticed the doll-like blond girl for herself. Narcissa in her turn treated Severus like the brother she’d always wanted, picking up Lucius’ pet name for him on the way, and gave Lucius more hell than even Severus ever dared. It took him much longer than it should have to realize she’d been in love with Malfoy from their first day at Hogwarts: until the Leaving Concert at the end of their second year (Lucius sang “Un’aura amorosa” with Severus’ accompaniment) when he found her in the rehearsal room in floods of tears.

He was aware, the whole time, that Lucius and Narcissa both were risking censure from their families by spending time with him at all. Lucius could get away with it by treating him almost as a servant (and genuinely thinking of him that way); Narcissa had to claim that she was using him to further her relationship with Malfoy, a goal her family approved of. Watching the strait and tortuous path she had to walk, he reflected that there were benefits after all to half-blood status.

Mrs. Black had had strict opinions on the appropriate musical practices for girls. Bella sang (oh Lord, did she ever) and Andri played the harp, so Narcissa was left with the flute. She was technically competent but not particularly interested, and soon found herself stuck at second chair in the orchestra while that shabby Gryffindor Marauder, Lupin, took first.

After the—incident—the winter of sixth year, Narcissa’s family pressured her hard to drop out of the orchestra, once it became clear Lupin wasn’t going anywhere. (The Lupin issue was the first time Severus realized Dumbledore had real authority—he would have bet on the old fool buckling under to the pureblood families’ united pressure in two seconds flat. It was annoying to have to respect the meddling old man.) Slytherin to her bones, Narcissa obeyed sweetly and complaisantly, and spent the resulting free time scribbling frantically over sheets of music paper.

“Composer at work?” Severus inquired sardonically, finding her alone in the common room when the others had gone off to orchestra practice.

“Go and make closer acquaintance with a Norwegian Ridgeback, Severin. You know I don’t compose.” Narcissa chewed absently on the end of her quill, staining it slightly with pale pink lipstick. “Why can’t clarinets be in C?”

Severus blinked. “They aren’t?”

“You’re just a pianist. You don’t know anything. Go away. Go away and bring me a clarinetist.”

He had to think about that one. “The dark girl from Gryffindor? You don’t want her, do you?”

“Deborah? She’ll do. Or that fat little Hufflepuff boy, the one who looks like what happened when someone got the spell wrong and made the pumpkin into the coachman instead of the coach.”

“…I’m going to practice,” he said, and sat down at the piano with a Beethoven sonata. Narcissa just chewed her quill harder.

He found out what she was doing somewhat later that year, at the Spring Recital. The five woodwind players on the stage were a group to make anyone’s jaw drop. Even the Slytherins had some grudging respect for Deborah Vine, a pretty, solidly built black girl from North London who doubled the clarinet with Keeper for the Gryffindor team. Her colleague Martin Thornhill was a fourth-year Hufflepuff whose thick spiky hair and remarkable roundness made him universally known as Hedgehog. A Ravenclaw yearmate of his was playing third flute, Peggy Cassar, brown-haired and flat-chested and looking as if she wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. Next to her was Narcissa, flawlessly elegant even in her school uniform, fair hair catching the light as her flute did. And next to Narcissa was Remus Lupin.

Severus wondered how many Slytherins—no, how many purebloods, even wizard-raised half-bloods—were going to walk out. The real music-lovers hadn’t abandoned the orchestra, he knew, and Narcissa had a lot of power within her own House, but Remus Lupin… .

God only knew he couldn’t be less prepossessing to look at, medium height (Severus had been more than a little disconcerted sometime last year to find himself taller than two out of three Marauders), thin and bony, mid-brown hair badly needing a cut, brown eyes. The scars on his face were no longer such a livid color, but they still drew the eye.

Narcissa didn’t give the audience time to figure out what they thought: she announced in her best pureblood-princess voice “This is a song called “Songbird,” by McGloohan arranged by Black,” and raised her flute to her lips. The others did likewise, Lupin glanced across the group, drew breath, and the sweet woodwind voices began.

“Arranged by Black” got through to him by the end of the first measure: _that_ was what she’d been doing in the common room all those nights. He should have worked it out sooner. By the second measure, he realized the graceful blue harmonies added up to jazz, and sat there not knowing whether to burst out laughing or fall over backwards. He wasn’t shocked by it himself—the dubious benefits of halfblood status. (The one thing his parents had in common was a love of music; Eileen had been brought up as a nice pureblood girl playing classical piano, but Toby had introduced her not only to jazz but even to Elvis.)  

Someone more sheltered than he actually did walk out: a pair of fifth-year Slytherin girls, Philip Parkinson’s latest girlfriend (probably not for long, since Phil didn’t trouble to follow her out) and her bosom buddy. Everyone else sat riveted. Lily Evans looked pleased with the whole thing, but she wouldn’t know the connotations the way the purebloods did. James Potter was grinning, the tone-deaf bastard.

Sirius Black wasn’t there, of course. Severus couldn’t remember the last time Black had showed his face at any musical event. Potter, who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, came every time to ogle Lily and cheer on his friends, but Black thought it was cool and rebellious to go on about how much he hated all music, and especially classical music.

Severus preferred Narcissa’s rebellion. She’d chosen the perfect song, delicate and confident and sweet-voiced and satisfying, much like herself. A Slytherin pureblood girl from a noble family arranging a jazz tune for the Leaving Concert, that would be shocking enough _without_ having Lupin involved. He wondered absently if, when her family took her to task over it, she’d blame it on his own deleterious half-blooded influence. Not that he’d care, if it would keep her mother off her back. Giving the whole thing up, he let go of the political issues and concentrated on the song.

Only a few minutes long, it still gave each performer a chance to shine briefly (who would have expected such an egalitarian arrangement from a daughter of the House of Black). The pure clarity of Lupin’s last rising phrase sent a tingle up through the top of Severus’ head and made him shiver once in his seat.

 

1977

The first Saturday of seventh year, Narcissa came into his practice room without knocking, as usual. “Severin, make some time this evening, please.”

_Please_ from her was always a verbal frill, no more. “What for?”

“I want you to do some accompanying. You will, won’t you?”

“Accompanying what? Who for? Why?”

The direct questions made her sigh gently. “Be here at eight and you’ll see,” and she was gone. Severus glowered at the closed door and knew he’d be there. He and Narcissa, the most Slytherin of the Slytherins, had committed the cardinal sin of trusting each other.

He was there a few minutes early, on the principle that forewarned was forearmed. Still, he rose unthinkingly from the piano bench when Remus Lupin walked in. Five and a half years’ worth of learned avoidance of any Marauder (even Lupin, who had almost never been the instigator) combined with any wizard’s instinctive recoil from a known werewolf. And Lupin was between him and the door.

He had his wand out and a curse on his lips when he saw the narrow black case in the Gryffindor boy’s hand. No one would come to do violence or worse while carrying a musical instrument, that was one of the few unshakeable truths around the castle. Severus kept his hand on his wand and waited.

Lupin tilted his head a little and made a gentle, self-deprecating face. “Sorry to startle you, Snape. Narcissa said you’d agreed to accompany…? I’m working on the Poulenc flute sonata, and you’re about the only one who’s up to the piano part. I’ve got the sheet music right here.” __

Severus debated what he could do to Narcissa, but let it go. She’d boxed him in nicely. If he’d learned anything in going on seven years of Lucius, Narcissa, Potter, Black, Lupin, and the rest of the school—not to mention Lily Evans before that—it was to know when he was beaten. He sat down on the piano bench. “Poulenc. Right. Give me the damn music.”

That was how they began.

The Poulenc sonata was a piece you could not scowl while playing, Severus discovered, the first movement flowing along all trills and leaps and perpetual motion, the second movement a gentle, dreamy aria—just like Lupin, meandering along head-in-the-clouds and yet knowing all the time where it was going—and the third movement a fast breathless duet, racing each other through it while keeping the tempo rock-steady. Just accompanying wouldn’t do it, he actually had to breathe with Lupin or the music wouldn’t come together.

The slow interlude in the third movement caught him by surprise the first time through, and he lost Lupin and had to stop. “Missed the tempo change,” he said shortly, irritated with himself for stupidity. “Sorry.”

Lupin shook his head, automatically wiping his flute with a soft black cloth. “No problem. My God, but you can sightread. Are you sure you haven’t been practicing this?”

Severus barked a laugh, twisting his head so that his hair would swing across his face. “When would I have done that? Your standards aren’t very high, are they?” He wanted to say _You’re not so bad yourself_ , or something along those lines—anything that would speak to that clean, vibrant, tender sound—but bit his tongue, hard. “From two measures before, then.” Lupin nodded, raised his flute and the music surrounded them again.

After that, seventh year meant Severus and Lupin most days in the practice room. Sometimes Narcissa tagged along, curled up in a corner with an essay to write or a novel or some dog-eared music paper, offering unasked-for advice at intervals.

And then the day he said automatically “Tomorrow, same time?” and Lupin bent his head to his flute case and said “Not tomorrow—I can’t—“ and Severus realized with a weird kind of horror that he’d forgotten not just the full moon but why it mattered.

“I’m sorry—“ Lupin whispered, still not looking at him.

“Next week, then,” Severus said roughly, and brought his hands down on the keyboard in the first piece that came to mind, a spiky Kabalevsky sonata, and tried not to listen to the way Lupin’s breath trembled.

For some reason, those three days when Lupin wasn’t anywhere—not anywhere he wanted to think about—made him notice where Lupin usually was. On his own, or with Potter, or in the practice room. But not with Black. Up until—until sixth year, he’d never seen Black but Lupin was at his shoulder, always looking at him with much the same infuriated fondness that Lily Evans showed to Potter these days. No longer. The Marauders weren’t Marauding, Severus realized. Potter was still Potter, guffawing with Black, studying with Lupin, holding hands with Evans—but never all at once. When was the last time he’d seen Potter, Black and Lupin together? A long time ago. As long as Lupin’s—incident.

So Sirius Black, the pureblood rebel, followed his family’s beliefs in one way at least.

His loss, Severus decided viciously, and waited for Lupin to return.

They did the Poulenc sonata at the winter recital. Waiting offstage for the girl before them—Lily’s friend Garnet Reville—to finish her cello solo, Severus pictured Lucius Malfoy, that calm and infuriating sense of infinite superiority, an ego so big it could protect a scrawny little first-year halfbreed too. When the applause for Garnet passed and the lights dimmed, Severus strode out on stage as if he were Lucius Malfoy, as if he could keep a werewolf safe.

He knew the audience was smaller than it had been when Garnet was playing. Not so much the seventh years, resigned to Lupin’s company in the classroom, but the younger students who had even less toleration. And yet the music was timeless and lovely, an island of peace, and when it was over the applause made them sway on their feet. Severus saw Narcissa holding court in the Slytherin corner of the audience, clapping so hard her perfect hairdo vibrated. Across the room, Lily’s red hair flared around her grin, and Potter raised both fists as if he’d just won another Quidditch game. Lupin’s face warmed, and Severus was grateful to James Potter for the first time in his life.

After New Year’s, they went on meeting in the practice room because it was a habit now—sometimes fooling around with one of the Bachs ( _didn’t anyone not named Bach ever write anything for the flute?_ Severus complained, not seriously), sometimes one practicing while the other studied for NEWTs, sometimes joined by Narcissa or Lily (never both at once) for an impromptu study group. Severus didn’t notice when Lupin became “Remus” in his mind—both the girls called him that, after all—although he remembered, always would remember, the first day Remus got up the nerve to mimic Narcissa’s usage and call him “Severin.” That day, he ran a fingertip along the scars on Remus’ face, silvery now, and felt Remus’ hands grip his shoulders. There were any number of ways to play duets.

 

1985

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Minerva almost always had music playing in her office, the wireless or an ariel spell, but not now. At least she hadn’t chosen to mourn Black with a full-on Requiem, Severus thought ironically.

“No,” she said suddenly, making him jump a little and hope she hadn’t seen it. “I take it back.”

“…?”

“I’d rather you blamed Sirius than blaming yourself. He’s past hurting now. And none of us have been very good at stopping you blaming yourself. When—when—“

Severus took a deep breath that scraped his throat like sandpaper. “When Lupin died,” he said, because she couldn’t. He still couldn’t manage the more intimate name out loud.

Minerva raised a hand to her eyes again. “Yes. I didn’t know you then the way I do now. I couldn’t see then how good you were for Remus.”

“Much good I did for him,” he snapped, breath catching.

“As much as anyone could have.”

“Except Black!”  
“No!” she shot back. “Sirius was not a bloody miracle worker, he was just another boy! And by the time Remus died, Sirius was the _least_ of his problems. Severus, you were _there_ with him. Why am I the one telling this to you? You know better than that, if you would only stop wallowing in self-blame for one _minute.”_ Her hair was coming down.

“Fine, one minute,” he ground out, coming to his feet and striding over to one of her small leaded windows. Outside it was sleeting, _typical_ , and he glared out at the winter grayness and forced his mind to what he’d been trying to forget for years, the last weeks with Remus, incongruously enough in the worst of the summer heat.

 

1979

Edinburgh didn’t usually have heatwaves, and the little flat wasn’t set up for coolness. (Why Edinburgh? Cheaper than London and almost as many concerts.) Severus was hunched over the piano in his smalls, still wrestling with the minefield of the Rachmaninoff-Paganini rhapsody. (“Anyone else would play the Second Concerto if they wanted to be a virtuoso,” Remus had teased him when he first started working on it. “You’re just being contrary.” “You expected otherwise?” Severus snarled, and tried the left-hand part alone while his right hand fell to other work.)  

He was struggling with the syncopations in the “Piu vivo” when he had to stop to mop sweat out of his eyes, and saw Remus on the faded and patched excuse for a couch. “You’re back,” he discovered.

“I didn’t want to interrupt.” Remus’ voice was hoarser than usual. “You were concentrating.”

“Five points to Gryffindor for powers of observation. I’ve had enough of this thing for the moment. Let’s have something to drink. Accio lemonade.” Lily had made the lemonade for them, ridiculous quantities, when she’d visited last weekend. (“What, no Potter?” “Stuff it, Sev. I don’t have to drag my boyfriend around with me everywhere I go, and he’s working anyway. I thought you’d be relieved not to see him.” “Oh, I am,” he’d said, but he wasn’t. Remus, who hadn’t said anything, would have enjoyed seeing James.)

Severus put his shirt and jeans back on before pouring himself a glass of lemonade: it didn’t suit his ideas of dignity to sit around the house in his underwear, no matter how hot it was—or that Remus had seen him in less. It was a couple of minutes of deeply relieved gulping before he noticed that Remus still had his robes on—the good ones, not quite as shabby—and hadn’t touched his glass. “What’s going on? Take those things off, will you. I’d rather not have to swelter over a potion to cure heatstroke.”

Remus obeyed him, listlessly. He still didn’t drink. “I went to get the reply from Thick’s.” The wizarding bookshop.

Severus could see on his face what it had been. “No luck.”

“No. They understand that it’s perfectly safe, of course, but their customers might not feel comfortable, and as a purveyor of school texts and wizarding stories for children in particular…” Remus’ very slight Guernsey accent briefly transmuted itself to a genteel Scottish one. “So much for my career as a bookshop assistant.”

“…That’s all just excuses,” Severus managed, after a beat or two too long. “What they’re really afraid of is that you’d spend all your time sitting on a bookcase ladder reading your way through the stock.”

Remus’ smile was very small and very faint, but real. “Would it were. They’re not as Slytherin as you are, Severin.”

“Who is?” he snapped. “Drink some lemonade. And get your flute. We didn’t finish the Bach last week.”

Remus sighed, a long, liquid, private sound full of all the unhappiness and frustration he wouldn’t let himself put into words. He closed his eyes for just a moment, then took a sip of lemonade from Severus’ glass and stood up to find his flute.

That night it was too hot to sleep. The sounds of magical and Muggle Edinburgh street life drifted up to the open window. Tired of turning over and over in a sweaty doze, Severus finally sat up in exasperation and found a Beethoven score and last month’s _Toil and Trouble_ , one of the professional potions journals. One or the other should see him through the wee hours. “ _Lumulos_ ,” he murmured, balancing his wand where the miniature sphere of light would fall on the pages.

Next to him, Remus stirred. Severus bit back a curse at himself. “ _Nox_ ,” he said instead. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep. Go on reading.”

“No…Can’t sleep?”

“Worried,” in a muffled voice, Remus facing away from him. “If I can’t find a job…”

Severus bit his lip. “Hardly worth lying awake over, is it? We’re managing for money. With what my mother left, and your dad’s annuity—“

“That won’t last long, not to live off. It’s not as if either of us came from money to begin with.”

“I’m teaching, aren’t I? Dribs and drabs, fair enough, but it adds up.” Plenty of wizarding families wanted piano lessons for their children. A few months had been enough to make clear that Severus’ students fell into two groups: those who quit after their second lesson, sometimes in tears, and those who made steady and sometimes remarkable progress. He wasn’t sure this division correlated exactly with actual talent, but that was their problem, not his. “And there’s your work for Dumbledore.”

At irregular intervals, the Headmaster sent crumbling old parchments to be transcribed onto newer ones, a trivial but fiddlingly precise job for which Remus was paid by the word. “Dumbledore’s monthly allowance for me, you mean,” Remus corrected him, uncharacteristically bitter.

Severus made himself shrug (not that Remus could see him in the darkness). “Why should we concern ourselves with the old man’s motives? A Galleon’s a Galleon, for a’ that.”

“I want to _work_ ,” in a strained voice. “You’re working—I think you like the teaching more than you claim to, and anyway you’ll be on the platform soon enough—“

“I should be so lucky, and you know it. Concert pianist gigs aren’t come by so easily.”

“Severin, you know you can’t sell yourself short in front of me.” But the smile in Remus’ voice was fleeting. “James is having the time of his life test-flying Comets, Lily’s an apprentice architect at Gaudy and Wright—“ He stopped there, and swallowed.

“Narcissa—“ Severus began, anxious to fill the gap.

“—is at home learning to arrange flowers and charm napkin rings for the only job her family will approve for her, otherwise known as Madame Lucius Malfoy.” Remus sighed. “But even that is something she’s not entirely loath to take on.”

“More fool she.”

“You’re not in a position to criticize other people’s taste, Severin.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at whom you’re sharing your bed with.” Typical of Remus to say _whom_. “A permanently unemployed werewolf, useless in any practical sense and perhaps increasingly unstable…”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Severus demanded. “ _Lumos!”_

“ _Nox_ ,” Remus said instantly, and they both blinked in the spell-flicker. “Which word would you like

defined? ‘Werewolf’? ‘Unemployed’?”

“What the hell do you mean, increasingly unstable? Don’t you think I would notice a thing like that?” His voice was no longer a night-time murmur.

“How would you know? How would _anybody_ know?” Remus shot back, his voice shaking now. “No one’s ever done long-term research into werewolves, they just toss the unregistered ones into Azkaban—if they find them in time—and make the rest register with the Ministry, and then let us slowly starve. Who knows how it really works, or cares? Your mind _changes_ , Sev, every month, you’re _gone_ from yourself for a while, and when you come back are you really the same? Am I the same? How would I _know_?”

“I would know,” Severus hissed. He could feel at least one of them trembling hard. “How could I _not_ know? Who makes the potion for you every month?” He reached over and gripped Remus’ shoulder hard, until he could feel bone. Instead of wincing away, Remus hunched himself hard into Severus’ grasp.

“I hate being afraid every month,” he whispered. “If all those people who won’t hire werewolves knew, I’m more scared of myself than any of them are. I just want it to stop.”

Severus let go of his shoulder and stroked his hair instead, willing into the touch calm and warmth and, yes, love, and all those other things he had never finished learning how to say out loud.

 

Later—he knew it wasn’t the next day, but could never remember again whether it was three days later or that same week or a month after—Severus came home at night and found him.

Remus lay crumpled in the narrow space left between couch and piano. There was no confusion, no agonizing moments of calling his name or shaking his shoulder or searching for a pulse. For one thing, the wand and the shattered hand mirror which lay beside him told the tale; and Severus had seen him sleeping and unconscious too often ever to mistake a breathing Remus for this still figure. He understood it all.

Severus sat there with him in silence for some unknowable time; and then knew what to do next. He got up, feeling as if he were being operated by some distant _mobilicorpus_ , and moved to the piano. The Bach flute sonata still on the music stand almost shattered him; he sent it flying with a wild gesture, and brought his hands down on the keyboard in a violent discord before he could find where the music in his head was. Not Bach. Not Poulenc. Nothing where he could only play half the music.

Instead he harked back to that Spring Recital before he’d ever touched Remus, the song Narcissa had arranged—because she loved jazz, because she loved arranging, because she wanted to show the musical population of Hogwarts that Remus Lupin the new-made werewolf was also her dearly held colleague. “Songbird,” plaintive drifts of eighth notes, improvising the harmony as he went along. The last phrase was agony; Severus hunched over, forehead against the music rack, strangling on sobs he couldn’t voice. Fear of what might not come to him next dragged him to his feet, twisting away from where Remus lay to choke out “Expecto patronum!”

The silvery wolf leapt away. Severus sank back onto the piano bench, closed the keyboard lid and rested his head on it, spent, not knowing or caring whom he had summoned.

But he wasn’t surprised when it was James who came. For himself he might have called to Narcissa, who had been Remus’ friend too, or Lily, who had known him since before Hogwarts. But Remus would have wanted James. Or Black; but no one had seen or heard from Sirius Black since they had left school. Even now, there would be no way to tell him that Remus was dead.

 

1985

The window in Minerva’s office was chill against his forehead. Severus straightened slowly, knowing he had gone well past his mockingly literal interpretation of her “one minute.”

“It’s over now,” Minerva said quietly, and he didn’t know what was showing on his face but she gave him one glance filled with—empathy, and more emotion than he could identify in that space of time—and then looked away.

Silence prevailed. The room was too warm. “If that’s all, Deputy Headmistress,” he said finally, formally, “I have classes to prepare.”

“Of course.” No one could out-formal Professor McGonagall. “Do consult me if I can be of help with anything, Professor Snape.”

“Of course,” he repeated, and made his escape, down to the dungeons where steaming cauldrons and hapless fourth-year essays would spare him from having to think, or remember anything more.

 

But he should have known better to think Minerva had let it all go. “Severus,” she said simply, appearing in his classroom one day after the last class had left. “I need an accompanist.”

“Look elsewhere,” he answered, instantly.

“No, thank you. I have high standards. I decline to be accompanied by any but the best.”

The fifth-years had been making a Monochromatis Potion. If he was careless about cleaning it up, he’d get burned.

Minerva perched herself neatly on one of the students’ stools, bringing her eye level nearly up to his own as he moved about the room. “You know you were too good not to play.”

“You will note your own use of the past tense.”

“Are you seriously telling me you don’t miss it?”

“Minerva, kindly cease and desist. I’ve given you my answer.” His hand on the jar of leftover albinic acid was steady.

Minerva swung her legs like a little girl, watching him with sharp grey eyes and an entirely unreadable expression. “I have a bet with Filius,” she said finally, and Severus as near as dammit splashed the acid all over his robes.

“Over whether or not you can bully me into playing?” he demanded, hearing his voice crack into harshness.

She tilted her head, with a perfect expression of mild surprise. “Goodness no, how unfeeling that would be. Over the _Dichterliebe._ ”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know the piece, I’m sure, the Schumann song cycle? Filius is convinced that only a tenor—a man—could perform it passably. As an alto, I beg to differ. Therefore, I need an accompanist. One who can transpose.”

“The students—that Ravenclaw girl, Maltin—or Owens from my House—“

“Certainly not. It’s a faculty recital. The staff send-off for the leaving students, in May. Plenty of time to rehearse.”

“With someone else. Anyway—the _Dichterliebe_? What are you planning to do with all the feminine pronouns and declensions? I wasn’t aware your tastes lay along those lines.” He wanted to make her angry.

Minerva laughed instead, easy and genuine. “Really, Severus! It’s a musical endeavor, not a literal expression of one’s own feelings. To hear you talk, you’d think only Muggles could sing the _Erlkönig_.”

That made him snort, in spite of himself. “If you say so. But we’re getting off the point. I don’t play any more. You know that.” He made the statement as bald as it could be.

“I know you haven’t played since you came to teach here,” Minerva agreed calmly. “That’s no reason why you shouldn’t start again. Many of us have needed some time to reconcile music—or hobbies, I suppose—with our teaching responsibilities.”

“ _No,_ ” he said, but oddly enough his voice caught in his throat. Minerva nodded briskly.

“Here’s the music—I won’t be singing _all_ the songs, that’s not necessary to win the bet. I’ve marked the ones I’ve chosen. You know where the staff practice room is, I’m sure. Do feel free also to use the piano in my office whenever I’m teaching. I’ll meet you there for a first rehearsal, oh, next Monday before lunch? You also have a free period then, if I’m not mistaken. Thank you, Severus, I do appreciate it.”

And she was gone, so quickly he wouldn’t like to swear she hadn’t Disapparated. The score to the song cycle lay on his desk.

 

He’d come to Hogwarts again the fall after Remus died. Professor Slughorn retired, and incredibly enough Severus was on his list of possible successors as potions master. Why Dumbledore had chosen him—barely twenty-one, with no teaching experience unless you counted those piano lessons—was a mystery. Or perhaps not so much of one. Lucius Malfoy’s family held a great deal of influence at Hogwarts. Lucius, seeing his onetime protegé now free of his lycanthropic encumbrance, would have been delighted to bring Severus back within his sphere of influence. And Narcissa would have encouraged him.

(He would have liked a chance to talk about Remus with Narcissa, just once; but she was already well on her way to being Madame Malfoy, and she couldn’t do it. She was giving up just about everything else in her life to marry the man she loved—he wasn’t under any illusions about why she’d urged him so fervently to stick to the piano after they left school—and he didn’t want to make her choose, again.)

Lily had done some of what Narcissa couldn’t. A lot of owls came to his room in Hogwarts that first year, carrying pages and pages of Lily’s untidy handwriting, more often than not with a few lines at the bottom in James’ incongruously neat copperplate. The letters helped. He wrote back, briefly, at wide intervals. He went to the wedding, and wished it were in him to rejoice the way Lily deserved.

And then that stupid accident. He still hadn’t decided which he was angrier at James for: dying and taking Lily with him, or dying so there was no one he could talk about Remus with, just when he’d finally thought he might be able to.

After that, his job got him through for a while. He hated it, but waking up in the morning and having something to hate was remarkably unconducive to suicide. And he really had always loved potions—as long as he didn’t ever have to brew Wolfsbane again in his life.

And once in a while there was a student who did better than the others, who had a flair, or one who wasn’t intimidated by him and could talk back without being disrespectful, and before he knew it it was as if he’d always been the Potions professor. He pulled sarcasm and elegant phrasings and an atmosphere of danger around him like his robes, and let them protect him and become part of him, keeping him further—safer—from the boy who had loved Remus.

He did not play the piano, because that was part of that boy’s life too.

And yet here he was in the tiny staff practice room at the top of one of the towers, raising the lid on the little upright Stoneway—goblin-made, of course, Hogwarts wouldn’t have anything but goblin-made pianos—and resting his hands on the keys. He had missed this so much that part of him had grown numb. And how, after all, could he lose anything more than he had already?

 

Three months later, he put on his best suit, unworn since he was twenty, and walked onto the stage after Minerva, splendid in a red velvet dress that managed to be both respectably matronly and temptingly female. There was applause, including some whistles from the older and bolder Gryffindors for their Head of House, and a few hisses from the Slytherins for theirs—the snakes’ version of clapping. There was also a definite undercurrent of surprised noises. Even the seventh-years had entered Hogwarts after Severus had left: all the students here now were seeing him sit down at a piano for the first time.

Minerva—all professional now, Deputy Headmistress entirely subsumed into the singer—made a quarter turn in his direction, and he nodded fractionally, and she nodded back, and he took the deepest breath he could manage and started the prelude to the first song.

The piano asked a plaintive question, hard to pin down to minor or major, twice, and Minerva began to sing: “ _Im wunderschönen Monat Mai_ …” She had cast a Supertitulus spell from backstage, so that the listening students would see the English lyrics projected discreetly above her head. “In the wonderful month of May…” The song kept on asking questions, neither singer or piano ever reaching a resolution, and trailed off gently after “…my yearning and longing.”

Remus…

“The rose, the lily, the dove, the sun,” Minerva sang, and the piano bounced away under her melody line, flirting and merry, casual and affectionate.

Lily….

“I bear no grudge,” she sang, and Severus drew every breath with her, this song needing everything in him. The major key strove against the lyrics. “…there falls no light into your heart’s night…,” she sang, and then building to a desperate high climax, “I saw the serpent that feeds on your heart,” and he leaned into the piano and felt his heart twist in his side. “I bear no grudge, _ich grolle nicht_ ,” she repeated, at last.

And with no time for reflection, the incessant wandering fast eighth notes of the next song, roving from major to minor and back again, while she sang over it in short bursts: “The flutes play…” “Surely, there dancing the wedding dance…” and trapped in the ceaseless piano line, he remembered Lily’s wedding.

And the last song, after a short time or a very long time. The piano prelude was declamatory, hard descending fifths with no room for doubt, and Minerva came in singing the same pattern with all the authority of her years of teaching. “ _Die alten, bösen Lieder_ … The old, angry songs, the dreams angry and nasty, let us now bury them…” Until the last verse it went all her way, dark and resolute and casting away grief. For the last, rhetorical question, though, her voice and the piano sank into a gentler, lower register together: “How could the coffin be so large and so heavy? I also sank my love, and my pain in it…”

Minerva’s rich alto lingered on the last, unresolved note of her part: and then, quite deliberately, she stepped to the side so that Severus at the piano held center stage. He played the long postlude with his eyes closed, the soft falling eighth notes in a major key, building and building until the gradual, intense resolution. He forgot the listening students and staff, lost in the chords, in the deep loving affirmation that balanced itself with the dark harsh minor of the first section, until the song drew inevitably to a close under his fingers.

There was a long shivering silence, and then thunderous applause.

 

After the concert, they retired to the Deputy Headmistress’ office, where she produced a bottle of firebrandy—of better quality than Severus had ever been able to afford in his life—and two crystal snifters, and they toasted the dead. Minerva sat on her sofa; Severus started out in the hard wooden visitor’s chair, and ended up somehow sitting on the floor where he could rest his head on the low table.

“Minerva,” he said finally, when they were both drunk enough that they might not remember it the next day anyway. “Why? For me? Why bother? All the songs.” He hoped she recognized this as the closest he could come to _Thank you_.

“You are less coherent when drunk,” Minerva reflected muzzily. “Do you really need to ask, Severus? I couldn’t take care of Remus. I lost James and Lily. Sirius slipped through my fingers. You’re the only one left—and don’t tell me about how you were never a Gryffindor.”

“God forbid,” automatically.

“Lion or snake, I will not lose anyone else if I can help it. And it’s time you stopped trying to lose yourself. Stop blaming yourself and breaking your own heart.”

“Put away all the old angry songs,” he murmured.

“Yes. That.” She closed her eyes and leaned back, half slipping off the low sofa in a heap of (modestly arranged) red velvet. “You’re alive, Severus. It’s the wonderful month of May. Live.”

 

Ich grolle nicht, und wenn das Herz auch bricht,

I bear no grudge, even as my heart is breaking,

\--Heinrich Heine, set to music in Robert Schumann’s “Dichterliebe”

**Author's Note:**

> Severus is twenty-six in 1985. Minerva is ten to fifteen years older. Still a very new teacher when he and the Marauders entered Hogwarts, she made some mistakes out of inexperience that she still blames herself for.   
> Like the rest of the music referred to, Loonis McGlohon’s “Songbird” is a real song, though probably not the one you’re thinking of. Narcissa’s arrangement is my own, but you can hear a more professionally arranged version by searching for “Songbird Rob McConnell” on YouTube. Strictly speaking I don’t think it had been composed yet in 1976, but there has to be some point in an AU.  
> The fragments of the “Dichterliebe” texts quoted in the last section come from a translation by James Liu et al.


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